20.2.11

Our history affected the even older history in the legendary GFFA

The aluminium coating with olive green anti-blinding paint and darkgray whateversripes that I started the last time is more or less completed. Of course I did things funnily here and there because I didn't really know how certain things would work out. So I'll explain a bit what I did and how as awhole, even if a part of it is some sort of repetition from the previous post.

First I painted most of the model with Tamiya's flat aluminium and a selected few panels with Vallejo's gunmetal gray. The contrast difference between those panels was too strong in my opinion so I fixed the problem by repainting those panels with aluminium to get a uniform-ish surface. I also found the green anti-reflectory part in front of the cockpit looked a bit too short to me compared to the lenght of the model's nose and a full-lenght thing would've looked silly too. A bit more was painted but so that there was a nice-looking strip of flat aluminium between the sensor cone and the olive green part.

The surfaces of the laser cannons (Taim & Bak KX9) I painted with gunmetal, except the counter-flash pieces that I painted with the aluminium paint. Of course I wanted to get some of those hull panels look a bit darker than the rest so I mixed a bit of the flat aluminium with Vallejo's Oily Steel and painted a random few panels with my mix, whatever looked good. In the end it was a couple of panels in each side of each wing and a couple in the bottom-rear part of the hull.

After all of that had dried nicely I coated everything with this new Citadel (or are the paints under GW's flag nowadays?) black liquied called Badab Black. That stuff also dries matt unlike its glossy predecessor. The whole model was painted with this thing and I saw that it was going to be good. Earlier today I was in the finishing up stage of the build and I fixed some of the minor foulups that I noticed while dry-fitting the pieces together.

The shallow semi-openings in the undersides of the S-foils I repainted black to cover the earlier metallic leaks. While doing that I paid more attention to the surface texture of the engine parts that are visible and decided to add some details to them by painting some of the wires with red and yellow. Just in case someone looks at the model from a good angle and good light. While I was at it I painted the first front panel lines of the wings with the same Vallejo Grey-Black that I had used on the sensor cone. The business ends of the ion engines (Incom 4L4 Fusial Thrust) I painted white and later with my 15+ years old Citadel Blue Glaze, which still works unlike so many newer Citadel paints... That was to get some sort of a running engine effect to the model. And yes, I know that in ANH those parts are red-ish but this is a prototype and blue is always so much more Imperial.

As a pretty finish I painted all the new surfaces with that aforementioned Badab Black and stared at the results:

I wasn't quite sure of how the modified and slightly larger Pilot was going to fit in his tub (and the cockpit window over him), so I took it easy and didn't put the pieces together for real, so I'd avoid any last moment fuckups. I mean, that would've pissed me off at this point because it actually looks nice, even if I say so myself. In addition to the final construction and photos the only missing element is some sort of a stand. Have to make it myself, I guess this model is just to be whooshed around until it breaks. Or something.